Awstats is more accurate then webalizer but one problem is that awstats takes too much server load when updating stats specially if you have big sites then it will take too much server load to update stats. Saad
Hi, Both are quite accurate, as they basically use the same log file information. By far, I prefer the AWStats reports (better global overview and more details). Using AWStats includes two steps: 1° read the log file, analyze it and generate the internal data base (intermediate data file) 2° read the internal data base and generate the reports Step 1 must be performed periodically. For example, once a day in the middle of the night. It can also be performed every 15 minutes for a kind of real time stats. You decide about this depending on your expectations and on the load it creates. Step 2 can be performed in two ways. Either you generate the reports "live" every time you look at the stats, either you create static HTML files with the reports immediately after each update of the intermediate data files. This flexibility makes AWStats usable in almost every web server environment. Jean-Luc
I run awstats every 10 minutes. I find accuracy comes with the list of spiders you have in the config. If you have an old list then it counts some spiders as actual visitors and skews the figures. Just make sure you update the config files as soon as they come out... or manually and that will give you a more accurate stats breakdown.
I tried AWStats but couldn't get used to it. I had to go back to webalizer. Although lately I've been using Google Analytics. It's better than both of the above stat scripts combined.
There are good points with Google Analytics and weaknesses, like: - no information about robots visiting your site - no information about hits on images, movies and other multimedia - no information about bandwidth Jean-Luc
I like awstats over webalizer, information seems more organized... webalizer always reports more traffic if you need to send someone some stats... turning of dns resolution in awstats will speed up the procesing time signifcantly... I also use google analylitcs, which I like the best, only drawback with google is that it doesn't give the entire referrer....
I've just started using all three (Webalizer, AWStats, and Google). I'm not completely satisfied with any of them, because I can't seem to locate the info I need. Most importantly, I'm looking for which search engines are referring important keyword phrases. I've decided to try shopping around for other options, although I figure I'll probably have to pay extra for it. I'd welcome recommendations if anyone has them.
These extra sections for AWStats show Search Keywords/Phrases by Search Engine. The extra sections must be added in your AWStats config file. Jean-Luc
my awstats and webalizer has always varied, on all the websites i run, different domain, different servers, but number of visits and hits is not the same... i tried google analytics and it shows even third version of results...well, i love awstats, so i stick to it
datasource is the same - so both should have about the same accuracy... but awstats provide much much more analysed data as compared to webalizer... so it's almost exclusively awstats for me